Guardian UK: Research links rise in Falluja birth defects and cancers to US assault

[marmar]

:argh:



Research links rise in Falluja birth defects and cancers to US assault

• Defects in newborns 11 times higher than normal
• 'War contaminants' from 2004 attack could be cause

Martin Chulov
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 December 2010 21.34 GMT


A study examining the causes of a dramatic spike in birth defects in the Iraqi city of Falluja has for the first time concluded that genetic damage could have been caused by weaponry used in US assaults that took place six years ago.

The research, which will be published next week, confirms earlier estimates revealed by the Guardian of a major, unexplained rise in cancers and chronic neural-tube, cardiac and skeletal defects in newborns. The authors found that malformations are close to 11 times higher than normal rates, and rose to unprecedented levels in the first half of this year – a period that had not been surveyed in earlier reports.

The findings, which will be published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, come prior to a much-anticipated World Health Organisation study of Falluja's genetic health. They follow two alarming earlier studies, one of which found a distortion in the sex ratio of newborns since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 – a 15% drop in births of boys.

"We suspect that the population is chronically exposed to an environmental agent," said one of the report's authors, environmental toxicologist Mozhgan Savabieasfahani. "We don't know what that environmental factor is, but we are doing more tests to find out." ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/30/faulluja-birth-defects-iraq

[fascisthunter]

1. I Can Recall folks online claiming there was no danger

from depleted Uranium. Wonder what their arguments would be like today....

[JohnyCanuck]

6. Video: British radiation expert Chris Busby PhD explains why uranium is genotoxic

and is much more dangerous to human health than is commonly recognized. This holds for all types of uranium whether depleted or undepleted, especially so when the uranium is in tiny particles that can be inhaled and become lodged inside the body.

From the Youtube blurb about the video:

Chris Busby of the University of Liverpool explains precisely how uranium - including natural, enriched, and depleted uranium - causes health problems. I don't know how useful it is to someone without a science background, at least introductory molecular biology, but Busby explains it extremely well in a convincing and frightening presentation. This information has not thus far been acted on by any regulatory agencies. The presentation was made in February 2008 as part of the public interventions in the environmental assessment of AREVA's proposed Midwest uranium mine in northern Saskatchewan. Busby was asked to present by the Saskatoon-based Inter-Church Uranium Committee Education Cooperative.

Chris Busby PhD Explains Why Uranium Is Bad For You (Part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42hJR1fX5VU

Chris Busby PhD Explains Why Uranium Is Bad For You (Part 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfNyZ9Kryb8

About Chris Busby:

Chris Busby was born in 1945 in Devon and educated in Kenya, Hampshire and Kent. He obtained a First Class Honours degree in Chemistry from the University of London and a PhD in Chemical Physics . He worked in research for the Wellcome Foundation for seven years applying spectroscopic and analytical methods to chemical pharmacology and molecular drug interactions and also researched Raman spectro-electrochemistry at the University of Kent.

Since 1987 he has developed his interests in the health effects of ionizing radiation and developed the 'Second Event Theory' which distinguishes between hazards from external and internal irradiation. He is the scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, based in Brussels and also national speaker on Science and Technology for the Green Party. A member of the International Society for Environment Epidemiology, he is also a member of the recently formed UK government committee on the health effects of internal emitters, CERRIE. Recently, he was invited to Iraq and Kosovo to investigate the health effects of Depleted Uranium and has given presentations on the issue to the Royal Society and to the European Parliament.

In 1994 he helped to found the Low Level Radiation Campaign and is its scientific consultant. He is a director of the independent environmental consultancy, Green Audit, (www.greenaudit.org) which was recently funded by the Irish State to research the effects of Sellafield on coastal populations. His book 'Wings of Death: Nuclear Pollution and Human Health' (Aberystwyth: Green Audit) was published in 1995 and is still in print. Much of the work he has done, including that on DU is to be found on the website: www.llrc.org. Email : [e-mail]

http://uraniumconference.org/C%20Busby%20CV%20en-sv.html

[fascisthunter]

10. thanks!

[jwirr]

8. Wasn't everyone over there to some extent exposed the DU? Why

would just this town be effected? What other chemicals did we use over there?

Having asked that I need to say that this makes me about as angry as I can get. My daughter was a victim of farm chemicals in the well water and we have paid a very high price for that. It makes me sick to think that we did this to all these children so we could have a little more oil. This is inhuman.

[fascisthunter]

9. I'm Sorry

about your daughter.

[jwirr]

11. From what I am reading she is much better off that those children and

she has good medical care in our nation. Thank you for your concern.

[fascisthunter]

12. my father just passed away this year from a brain tumor

who knows what he was exposed to during his time in the military or even at his job. This bothers me.

[jwirr]

13. Yes, we have used our soldiers as guinea pigs for years. My uncle

was in the chemical warfare division in WWII. He also ended up dying from what was assumed to have been the use of those chemicals. When it comes to the military we truly are throw away people. By the way those chemicals he used in WWII were part of his farm supply business when peace came. They just found ways to use them as pesticides and herbicides. Also fertilizers. No wonder my little lady and out family members are effected by this.

[Pavulon]

20. I handled DU and am still cancer free. I also have chest xrays

fly on jets and may bump into the radon gas from time to time...

[purrFect]

23. have you inhaled vaporized DU?

anyway, anecdotal evidence, especially a sample of one, does not make a valid statistical sample.

[Pavulon]

24. THE WHO study in the balkans covers it well, marks this as shit

google it, its accepted in the medical community . DU is like lead dont eat it.

[purrFect]

25. we are talking about Iraq

fyi

[Pavulon]

26. no shit, ever here of pripyat, compare the rates, check back in.

this is bullshit spread by people who never bothered to calibrate their lie.

[purrFect]

34. then please stay on topic

[Name removed]

36. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[purrFect]

40. lol

yeah, you're 'all over it' - roflmao

[Pavulon]

43. lol, is this more or less than the residents of pripyat? or balkan

cities where we really did use 30mm DU rounds to kill hard targets? Topic?

[JohnyCanuck]

30. Toxic link: the WHO and the IAEA

A 50-year-old agreement with the IAEA has effectively gagged the WHO from telling the truth about the health risks of radiation

Fifty years ago, on 28 May 1959, the World Health Organisation's assembly voted into force an obscure but important agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency – the United Nations "Atoms for Peace" organisation, founded just two years before in 1957. The effect of this agreement has been to give the IAEA an effective veto on any actions by the WHO that relate in any way to nuclear power – and so prevent the WHO from playing its proper role in investigating and warning of the dangers of nuclear radiation on human health.


The WHO's objective is to promote "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health", while the IAEA's mission is to "accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world". Although best known for its work to restrict nuclear proliferation, the IAEA's main role has been to promote the interests of the nuclear power industry worldwide, and it has used the agreement to suppress the growing body of scientific information on the real health risks of nuclear radiation.

Under the agreement, whenever either organisation wants to do anything in which the other may have an interest, it "shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement". The two agencies must "keep each other fully informed concerning all projected activities and all programs of work which may be of interest to both parties". And in the realm of statistics – a key area in the epidemiology of nuclear risk – the two undertake "to consult with each other on the most efficient use of information, resources, and technical personnel in the field of statistics and in regard to all statistical projects dealing with matters of common interest".

The language appears to be evenhanded, but the effect has been one-sided. For example, investigations into the health impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine on 26 April 1986 have been effectively taken over by IAEA and dissenting information has been suppressed. The health effects of the accident were the subject of two major conferences, in Geneva in 1995, and in Kiev in 2001. But the full proceedings of those conferences remain unpublished – despite claims to the contrary by a senior WHO spokesman reported in Le Monde Diplomatique.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/28/who-nuclear-power-chernobyl

[Pavulon]

32. that was quick, attack the source, not the data...

numbers are there for you to view. any person with a fucking frontal lobe can compare this bullshit to mutation rates in pripyat residents and make a non retard conclusion.

[JohnyCanuck]

27. Is it correct to say

The DU you handled was in solid form before it had burnt and exploded into minute particles of uranium oxide which could be dispersed by the wind and breathed into your lungs and from there cross the lung/blood barrier to become lodged in organ tissue or bone marrow etc.? Because apparently that can make a big difference as to whether or not the DU is likely to have a negative impact on your body.

From a presentation by Michael Fassy MD PhD, Associate Professor of Pathology at Mount Sinai Medical School in NY:

By the early 1900s, uranium was well recognized to be a kidney toxin. By the mid-1940s, uranium was known to be a neurotoxin. By the early 1970s, uranium was recognized to be a carcinogen based on mortality studies of uranium workers and on experiments with dogs and monkeys. The first evidence that uranyl ions bind to DNA was reported in 1949 and by the early 1990s, uranium was shown to be a mutagen. Also, in the early 1990s, uranium was shown to be a teratogen, that is, an inducer of birth defects. The toxic effects of uranium on the kidney and on the nervous system typically occur within days of exposure and radiation probably plays little or no role in mediating these effects. In contrast, the carcinogenic effects of uranium have a delayed onset. The teratogenic effects of uranium might be due to exposure of one parent prior to conception as well as to exposure of the mother to uranium early in pregnancy.

Now let us briefly consider the routes of exposure to uranium. In the context of the dust particles derived from depleted uranium weapons, this means exposure to uranium oxides. By far the most dangerous route of exposure to uranium oxides is the inhalational or respiratory route. Absorption of uranium oxides through the gastrointestinal tract, the skin and the conjunctivae is possible but quite limited.

Following impact with hard targets, uranium metal undergoes combustion releasing large quantities of very small uranium oxide dust particles into the environment.

These dust particles derived from depleted uranium weapons are drastically different from the natural uranium that is normally present in rocks and soil.

Soil particles contain uranium at very low concentrations, typically less than 5 parts per million; the vast majority of these soil particles, however, are too large to be inhaled deep into the lungs. In contrast, the dust particles derived from depleted uranium weapons contain very high concentrations of uranium, typically more than 500.000 parts per million; moreover, most of the D.U. dust particles are sufficiently small to be inhaled deep into the lungs. Thus, compared to the uranium naturally present in the environment, D.U. dust contains uranium in a form that is vastly more bio-available and more readily internalized.

Uranyl ions bind to DNA; they bind in the minor groove of DNA. While bound to DNA, uranyl ions are chemically reactive and can give rise to free radicals which may damage DNA. Chemically mediated DNA damage of this type may contribute to the ability of uranium to induce cancers.

I would now like to present some epidemiologic data from the Basra governate in the south of Iraq. In February 1991, more than 300 tons (possibly much more than 300 tons) of D.U. weapons were used in South of Iraq. After 5-6 year latent periods, increases in childhood cancers and birth defects were documented in the Basra governate. The most recent data indicate a four fold increase in pediatric malignancies and a seven fold increase in congenital malformations compared to 1990, the year preceeding the war.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4124449

[Pavulon]

31. Its political BULLSHIT see the study from the WHO in the balkans

it has no agenda to pimp.

[JohnyCanuck]

38. It has no agenda to pimp?

Well that's debatable after signing that agreement with the IAEA back in 1959.

Since the 21st anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in April 2007, a daily "Hippocratic vigil" has taken place at the WHO's offices in Geneva, organised by Independent WHO to persuade the WHO to abandon its the WHO-IAEA Agreement. The protest has continued through the WHO's 62nd World Health Assembly, which ended yesterday, and will endure through the executive board meeting that begins today. The group has struggled to win support from WHO's member states. But the scientific case against the agreement is building up, most recently when the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR) called for its abandonment at its conference earlier this month in Lesvos, Greece.

At the conference, research was presented indicating that as many as a million children across Europe and Asia may have died in the womb as a result of radiation from Chernobyl, as well as hundreds of thousands of others exposed to radiation fallout, backing up earlier findings published by the ECRR in Chernobyl 20 Years On: Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident. Delegates heard that the standard risk models for radiation risk published by the International Committee on Radiological Protection (ICRP), and accepted by WHO, underestimate the health impacts of low levels of internal radiation by between 100 and 1,000 times – consistent with the ECRR's own 2003 model of radiological risk (The Health Effects of Ionising Radiation Exposure at Low Doses and Low Dose Rates for Radiation Protection Purposes: Regulators' Edition). According to Chris Busby, the ECRR's scientific secretary and visiting professor at the University of Ulster's school of biomedical sciences:

"The subordination of the WHO to IAEA is a key part of the systematic falsification of nuclear risk which has been under way ever since Hiroshima, the agreement creates an unacceptable conflict of interest in which the UN organisation concerned with promoting our health has been made subservient to those whose main interest is the expansion of nuclear power. Dissolving the WHO-IAEA agreement is a necessary first step to restoring the WHO's independence to research the true health impacts of ionising radiation and publish its findings."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/28/who-nuclear-power-chernobyl

[Name removed]

41. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[TheWraith]

19. What else did we use? White phosphorus.

Which is some VERY nasty shit. Imagine napalm on steroids. In addition to the burning and the smoke, ingesting as little as 15 miligrams of the stuff can kill you. To compare, you'd need to ingest 50 times as much lead, or 100 times as much uranium, to have the same effect.

It's completely illegal to use WP on people, but it's still legal for use to provide battlefield smokescreens and illumination.

[Pavulon]

21. WP has an MSDS look it up. Popped it

and breathed it, still alive and paying taxes to this day.

[TheWraith]

16. Wrong, but thank you for that lovely strawman.

In fact, the debunking you remember was in response to the pants-wetting hysterical pseudo-science describing depleted uranium penetrators as "nuclear weapons" and all this insane rumormongering about radiation sickness, and a complete misunderstanding of even the word "radiation."

Uranium is a heavy metal, and therefore toxic. The fact that it has had it's most radioactive isotopes removed, and is therefore less radioactive than natural uranium, does not abrogate the fact that it is a toxic heavy metal, and therefore dangerous. But to assume that that danger comes from radiation is to completely disregard science. Yes, it can cause a variety of problems, including birth defects, if it gets into your body. The same is true of lead, which is actually twice as toxic as uranium, but you don't see anyone crapping their trousers over the danger of lead particulates being released by military operations, even though we probably should be.

[Pavulon]

17. like a person not in a church service preaching faith telling the gaggle

to compare this sample to Chernobyl. you know a real radiological disaster. when you find that these numbers exceed those, think about it. then atone.

[malaise]

2. Depleted uranium?

There is no justice on this planet or Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld would be in chains for war crimes.

[NutmegYankee]

7. A lot of folks think of radiation -

But Depleted Uranium is only weakly radioactive. Far worse is the fact that Uranium is a toxic metal (think of Lead, cadmium, and mercury). Uranium combined with lead and residual residues from explosives could be having this impact.

[Pavulon]

22. These claims always implode when compared to chernobyl

where they claim several times the impact of people eating cesium with every meal. The facts melt and only the lies remain.

[NutmegYankee]

28. Different metals have different effects.

Cesium, while acting like potassium and radioactive, doesn't have the other characteristics of a heavy metal on the body. The depleted Uranium "cause' is just speculation at this point. There are so many compounds that are toxic to human fertility and it cannot even be shown what it is or which side spread it. It could be something as simple as a rather toxic insecticide tank that was blown up insurgents when US soldiers approached it.

That said, I do find the use of heavy metals in a city a bit disturbing.

[Pavulon]

29. My recolllection was HE was used to kill dismounts

DU was not preferred to kill people in structures. DU was designed to kill T series armor. Not sure there was much of that in falluja?

[NutmegYankee]

33. I had that same thought.

Why use tank armor busting rounds on brick buildings? I keep seeing reports that we used a lot of Armor Piercing rounds, but perhaps they were not DU rounds.

[Pavulon]

35. It was only used in IFOR/KFOR gun runs

against armor. it was ineffective on soft targets. AH Crews switched over to other weapons then started carrying HE after T class stuff was gone.

[NutmegYankee]

37. to be honest

I jumped into this thread only to note that Uranium isn't very radioactive. It's a pet peeve that people think something with a half life of billions of years is horribly radioactive. It makes the Nuclear Power Plant threads a real pain in the ass.

[Pavulon]

39. I would not eat the stuff. And would not breathe it in the hull of a wrecked t72

but these people who claim mutations multiple times that of people who got massive doses are insane. I remember one of these where they claimed 10x the rate cancers that were actually recorded in the people who shoveled graphite off the roof at Chernobyl showed.

Its all a political game to some, just furthers their agenda, not reality.

[NutmegYankee]

44. Indeed.

There are those who have a strong anti-US agenda and they are quite vocal.

[Puregonzo1188]

42. How is Chernobyl relevant?

It would only be so if people argued the effects were caused by radiation which no one in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is doing.

Here's the facts both the Guardian newspaper and a peer reviewed scientific journal have both studied this and reached the conclusion that there is an increase of birth defects in Falluja. The question is now why. As you've pointed out, numerous times, these rates are higher than in the areas effected by Chernboyl (well you haven't made it clear what you're trying to say, being cryptic and then calling everyone a "retard" or stupid" in hopes of bullying them into silence is your strategy). Congratulations, you've successfully deduced that the birth defects in Falluja were not caused by the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. What a breakthrough! I'm sure there are numerous peer reviewed science journals anxious to publish you're exciting conclusions.

[Pavulon]

45. they source someone, they publish the gaza mutations

and the great conspiracy. real numbers from the balkans and Kuwait do nut support this agenda. the who has numbers on the US's website look them up. they dont support this agenda.

They arent caused by DU or WP or my favorite tungsten, idiots claimed tungsten caused it.

[Puregonzo1188]

47. OK then, what did?

No one is discussing Kuwait or the Balkans or Chernobyl. We don't even have to discuss DU or WP or tungsten.


Let's just look at the facts--two separate studies, one of them in a peer reviewed science journal, have concluded Falluja has an increase in birth defects. What information do you have to contradict these studies? And please, don't tell me it's impossible it was caused by a nuclear power plant or DU or chemtrails or anything else, just ask me what evidence do you have that both studies, including one in a peer reviewed science journal, have falsified their conclusions?

[Pavulon]

48. Like the fake million dead from a survey handed out, it is vapor

and yes anyone claiming mutations greater than liquidators and hinting around at ionizing radiation is bullshitting. did you really post chemtrails..

[jwirr]

55. How do you KNOW that there are not more mutations? Do you have

a study or personal witness? I'm asking about proofs not your opinion.

[slipslidingaway]

3. knr nt

[Puregonzo1188]

4. There was a huge rise in birth defects after the First Gulf War. Both in Iraq and among US soldiers.

This needs to be seriously investigated, though I suppose it will just be swept under the rug again.

[DCKit]

5. You can only sweep it under the rug until too many are sick.

We may want to consider confiscating and burying uniforms, and everything else they bring back from the M.E. (as toxic waste) to prevent the problem from impacting U.S. families.

[Name removed]

18. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[purrFect]

14. "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever."

Thomas Jefferson

[Karmadillo]

15. Quick! Somebody email Obama! He'll fight to make this right!!

nt

[Pavulon]

46. Anyone know what a liquidator was? $10 to charity for the first person who

posts the study comparing loss pregnancies in real victims to this bullshit.

[Puregonzo1188]

49. Yes, it relates to Chernobyl.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidator_(Chernobyl)

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. Nothing.

[Pavulon]

50. Sure it does. what did the US use. WP, DU, or a straight B61 airburst>

none of those support the numbers claimed. just like the gaza meme this is just bullshit. it is reposted every quarter or so.

[Puregonzo1188]

51. You have no intention of engaging with the facts, do you?

[Pavulon]

52. what fucking fact? mystery agent causes defects reported by local doc

bodies melt in gaza. No i really dont care to debate it. now come on out and blame the us an pick an agent. DU, secret VX nerve gas something. Unknown does not cut it here or in the gaza strip. same meme

[Mimosa]

53. If we could do it to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, why care about small town Fallujah?

Modern weaponry needs testing, riht? Limited testing. You want omelets, we break a few eggs. What's your big gripe lefties? You don't see President Obama whining, do you?

[kgnu_fan]

54. Kick!